WORLD
OF UNREASONWhere US planes bomb Afghanistan with $100 bills – and all
criticism of Israel is "anti-Semitic"

My
theory that the events of 9/11 blew a hole in the space-time continuum and
transported us into a world where up is down, and nonsense is reason – advanced
here, here,
here, and (presciently)
here – seems confirmed
beyond all doubt by the news that US planes are raining dollars on Afghanistan.
And, no, I don’t mean $1 bills – but, here, read
the Reuters story for yourself:

"U.S. aircraft
over southern Afghanistan have scattered $100 bills tucked into envelopes
bearing a picture of President George W. Bush, witnesses said on Thursday."

So
democracy, Western-style, makes its debut in the skies over Afghanistan: "People
pushed and fought with each other to get their hands on the envelopes," the
Reuters piece continues, which "bore no message." Ah, but there was
a message, albeit one implied rather than stated outright, and it is TITSATAAFL
(There Is TooSuch AThing
As AFree Lunch).

CARGO
CULT

Not
only is there a free lunch, but dinner’s on the house, too: each envelope
contained two $100 bills. It’s a lot more than pennies from heaven
– two big ones amounts to around a year’s income for the average Afghan, if
not more. Now there’s an odd way to plant the seeds of democracy: creating
an Afghan cargo
cult in which George W. Bush is a god.

ROLE
REVERSAL

What
could they have been thinking in Washington? This strange illogic,
which I referred to in my
last column on a theme of wartime mental malfunction as "Bizarro
logic," has literally turned the whole world upside down. So that, while
the US is engaged in such arrogant exercises in self-parody, spokesmen for
one of the worst dictatorships on earth are suddenly sounding almost reasonable.
Here
is Tariq Aziz, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, telling the German newspaper
Frankfurter Allgemaine that Iraq may sign on to "some form of inspection"
of its military facilities in return for a comprehensive regional approach
to the problem of how to curb weapons of mass destruction. The existence of
such weapons anywhere in the region ought to be considered a dire threat
to world peace, says Aziz  the clear implication being that Israel, too,
should be included in the UN inspections regime.

NUCLEAR
EQUIVALENCE

Israel
would undoubtedly reject such a demand as an outrageous example of "moral
equivalence." In that case, why shouldn’t Israel be subject to the
same Draconian sanctions as Iraq? Not that anyone doubts the willingness of
Ariel Sharon, and the even more crazed extremists to his right, to usethe
nukes they have. But, according to the Bizarro World logic of the post-9/11
era, we aren’t allowed to ask questions that criticize or challenge Israel
in any way, for that would be an expression of "anti-Semitism." Oh, yes, "everything
has changed" irrevocably, and we now have in force an intellectual version
of the "Patriot
Act" that banishes certain ideas from the public square.

"…
[O]ne cannot be against Israel or Zionism, as opposed to this or that Israeli
policy or Zionist position, without being anti-Semitic. Israel is the state
of the Jews. Zionism is the belief that the Jews should have a state. To defame
Israel is to defame the Jews. To wish it never existed, or would cease to
exist, is to wish to destroy the Jews."

A
WORLD WITHOUT FRANCE

Realizing
"this or that Israeli policy" means employing helicopter gunships against
rock-throwing teenagers is, by this standard, an anti-Semitic thought-crime.
It is "defamation" to speak truth to power, and a hateful act to wish such
power had never existed. "This is not something that is as obvious to as many
people as it should be," avers Halkin, to which I might add: one can only
hope! Yet I’m afraid the shockwaves emanating from Ground Zero have addled
even the sharpest minds, and the debilitating mental effects are radiating
rapidly outward. The campaign of intellectual intimidation – sparked by Barbara
Amiel and her now famous "j’accuse" aimed at supposedly rampant "anti-Semitism"
in Britain – has been remarkably successful, its chief success being that
anyone takes such obviously self-serving arguments seriously. According to
Halkin,

"Only
an anti-Semite can think the world would be better off without Israel, just
as only a Francophobe can think the world would be better off without France."

WHAT
ABOUT THE ZOROASTRIANS?

Let’s
get beyond the growing feeling on the part of many that the world would, indeed,
be better off without France and get down to Halkin’s argument, insofar as
he deigns to make one: since Jews have a state nowhere else, this extraordinary
immunity from any really fundamental and challenging critique must be granted
to Israel. But what about Iran – the only Shi’ite nation? Indicting Iran as
part of the "axis of evil," George W. Bush is indeed saying that the world
would be better off if it ceased to exist – isn’t this wrong, by Halkin’s
standard? Come to think of it, only a Basque-phobe would imagine the world
better off without a Basque homeland, even one ruled by the terrorist ETA.
And what about the Zoroastrians? Those poor guys don’t even have their
own state, so what if they seized one – expelling the original inhabitants,
like the Israelis did  and declared that anyone who opposed or criticized
them was guilty of anti-Zoroastrian bigotry? Would that be okay? The Mormons,
too, must be included, not to mention the Scientologists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses,
and the followers of Swami Baloney-nanda – why shouldn’t each have their own
little theocracy, protected from all criticism by a paralyzing political correctness?

As
for just how paralyzing, here is Halkin outlining the narrow parameters of
acceptable thought:

"Only
an anti-Semite can systematically accuse Israelis of what they are not guilty
of, just as only an Anglophobe can make such accusations against the English.
'Jewish' and 'Israeli' are not synonymous? No, they are not  but 40%
of the world's Jews live in Israel. There are Jews who are anti-Zionist? Yes,
there are  and there are Englishmen who revile England."

It
is enough to accuse Israelis of crimes they are guilty of to set off
denunciations of "anti-Semitism," as Pat Buchanan, former Congressman Pete
McCloskey, and Senator William J. Fulbright all learned to the detriment of
their careers. As for the little statistic: accepting it at face value, the
only possible response is  so what? More than 40 percent of the world’s
Hindus live in India, and yet Christians have
rightly reviled its government as subtly encouraging anti-Christian persecution.
More than 40 percent of the world’s Mormons live in Utah: does this mean criticism
of Utah is bigotry directed at the Latter Day Saints? Probably 100 percent
of the world’s neo-pagans
live in Seattle,
and environs – does this give them the right to anything other than the worst
weather in the US?

IN
THE NAME OF ‘SCIENCE’

In
our age of irrationalism, emotional "arguments" are skillfully rationalized
by intellectuals such as Halkin, whose job it is to give the latest outrage
against reason all the accouterments of modern science. It was inevitable,
therefore, that psychology, with all its murky "drives" and "unconscious"
desires, would be introduced into the discussion:

"Can
one then be anti-Semitic without knowing it? Of course one can, just as one
can be unconsciously antiblack or antigay or a misogynist. When prejudice
is socially acceptable, we admit it, first of all, to ourselves. When it is
taboo  as, with regard to Jews, it has been in Europe and America since
the Holocaust  we often conceal it even from ourselves. The preferred
way of concealing anti-Semitism in our times is to judge Israel more harshly
than other countries."

A
FIT OF HONESTY

But
what about judging Israel just as harshly as we do other countries,
say, Iraq? By Halkin’s own standards, he would have to agree to Tariq Aziz’s
proposal that UN inspection of Israeli nuclear facilities is merited. Does
this mean Commentary will be supporting sanctions against the Jewish
state when Sharon refuses to comply? Aside from the obligatory nod to political
correctness – does he really mean to compare the condition of Jews to that
of gays? – and all the Freudian mumbo-jumbo about "unconscious" anti-Semitism,
Halkin's long, fascinating essay presents a remarkably complex argument that
culminates in several peaks of unreason of which the following stands out
in its brutal honesty. Invoking the "double standard" criteria, which he credits
to Norman Podhoretz, Halkin asks:

"Who
at London dinner parties makes nasty remarks about Hindus because India has
militarily occupied Muslim Kashmir for half a century? What French diplomat
calls China a ‘big, sh-y country’ because of its occupation of Tibet?"

So
an alleged defender of Israel has no compunctions about comparing the depredations
of the Israeli settler colony with the genocidal policies of the Chinese Communists
in the pages of one of the world’s most widely-read newspapers. Such is the
arrogance of power. As for nasty remarks about Hinduism, I can’t vouch for
the London dinner party circuit, never having been there, but I can hopefully
point to some of my own
remarks about the relation of the Hindu god Shiva, "the Destroyer," to
India’s nuclear weapons
program as the harbinger of a trend.

PINCER
MOVEMENT

As
Israel launches an international campaign to normalize the horrific, and rationalize
its campaign to empty Palestine of the Palestinians, the redefinition of "anti-Semitism"
is an essential prelude to any large-scale Israeli military operation. For
without US support and financial aid, the Israeli settler colony would sink
like a stone in the Arab sea  and may yet even in spite of billions in US
tax dollars expended, due entirely to the pressure
of demographic trends. This is the ticking time bomb that threatens to
blow the Israeli state to smithereens, and the only way to head it off is
by a two-pronged attack: one prong, directed at the Palestinians, aims to
drive them out of the area altogether, into Jordan, where the Hashemites can
deal with them as they please. The other prong is directed at Jews worldwide,
a propaganda campaign designed to hype the alleged threat of a nearly non-existent
"anti-Semitism," and convince them to emigrate to Israel.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

So
the debate is reduced, in effect, to a bout of name-calling and racial-religious
rancor, with all men of good will caught somewhere in the middle, and, paradoxically,
increasingly marginalized in the debate. Believe it or not, I am a centrist
when it comes to Israel. For I am excoriated by both sides of the spectrum:
Jonah Goldberg once
denounced me for having a special antipathy for the Upper West Side of
Manhattan that could only be rooted in the rudest Judeo-phobia, while, just
as coherently, the notorious nutball Carol A. Valentine, self-styled " Curator"
of the "Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum," declares that I’m
part of the government-created "fake opposition" whose real goal is to
indoctrinate my readers with war propaganda. Ms. Valentine, author of a screed
entitled "Let’s Discuss
Mass Expulsion of Jews from US," among other works, rails that Antiwar.com
is pushing the "government lie that justifies this war" – the "lie" being
that bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. The US government, you see, really
destroyed the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, too – and Antiwar.com
is part of a conspiracy by You Know Who to cover up the real perpetrators
of this heinous act.

As
self-evidently nutty as the pronouncements of Ms. Valentine appear to be,
are they any less nutty than the people who take seriously Halkin’s
elaborate fantasies of secret "unconscious" anti-Semitic conspiracies? On
the one hand, we have Halkin, Barbara Amiel, and others who point to an alleged
worldwide upsurge in anti-Jewish persecution and anti-Semitism among the European
elites, and on the other hand we have Ms. Valentine and her cohorts who say
we all live under a "Zionist
Occupation Government" and excoriate me for being a philo-Semitic tool
of the Mossad.

NUTBALLS,
LEFT & RIGHT

La
Valentine darkly wonders: "Anti-war.com is a well-organized, expensive operation.
I wonder who pays for it?" Hah! The answer to that is our readers,
of course, whose tax-deductible contributions make our work possible. For
as much as we have antagonized extremists of all sorts, a great many people
from all over the world support our efforts to bridge the Israeli-Palestinian
gap and help create the conditions for a lasting Middle East peace. This effort
is rooted in the distinctively libertarian ethos from which our foreign policy
stance is derived: the firm belief that any Middle East solution must lead
to the creation of a secular, bi-national, free market Palestine, where power
is devolved back to local communities – and the nation of Israel, as we know
it today, is effectively abolished.

ALL
REASON FLED?

By
the new post-9/11 standards imposed by such arbiters of political correctness
as the Wall Street Journal and Commentary (not to mention the
omnipresent Andrew Sullivan!), such a stance is no less "anti-Semitic" than
the platform of the National Socialist German Workers Party. These days, to
be against tribalism and "blood-and-soil" ethnic particularism is to
be condemned as a bigot, an "unconscious" David Duke. Can the apocalyptic
violence of 9/11 really have ripped such a large hole in the space-time continuum
that reason itself has fled permanently to another dimension? Will we be trapped,
here, in this state of unreason for the rest of our natural lives? There are
some hopeful signs that the massive shock of 9/11 is slowly fading, and the
wave of mental dislocation that followed in its wake is receding. But, who
knows what future shocks await us? It could be that the damage is permanent,
and that the ability of the human race to reason is severely impaired forever.
In that case, we had all better save our candles, for the Dark Ages are truly
upon us.

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